How do I clone a specific branch in Git?

By default, git clone checks out the repository's default branch (usually main or master). If you need a different branch checked out from the start, you can specify it directly.

For a general introduction to cloning, see our tutorial on cloning an existing repository.

Clone and check out a specific branch

git clone -b develop https://github.com/your-org/your-repo.git

This clones the full repository (all branches and history) and checks out develop as the active branch. All other branches are still available — you can switch to them with git checkout or git branch as normal.

Clone only that branch

If you do not need the other branches, add --single-branch to reduce what is downloaded:

git clone -b develop --single-branch https://github.com/your-org/your-repo.git

With --single-branch, Git fetches only the history for the specified branch. You can still fetch other branches later.

Shallow clone for speed

If you only need the latest state of a branch (common in CI/CD pipelines), add --depth 1:

git clone -b main --depth 1 https://github.com/your-org/your-repo.git

This fetches only the most recent commit, significantly reducing download size for large repositories.

Combining flags

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